warmhotchocolate

Children’s Art Mobile

Yesterday was the last day of our vacation, and much of the day was spent taking down the Christmas decorations, making piles of stuff to donate and just generally de-cluttering.  Among the clutter were piles of drawings, paintings and writings done by J+J (mostly Jenna, of course) over the holidays. Since the walls in Jenna’s room are already pretty well covered with her artwork, I started to move the new art into the storage bins in the garage. But in the course of cleaning up around the house, I happened upon a package of wooden dowels and decided I would make a mobile out of some of Jenna’s recent art. Definitely a better way to spend the day than cleaning up … and, more importantly, I ended up with a pretty cool way to display children’s art.

Here’s how I made it:

I started with a stack of art, some silver crochet thread and a batch of 12 inch wooden dowels. I ended up only using 4 of the dowels, but I would have liked to make a taller mobile by using more dowels.

I used a 3 inch hole punch to cut the art into circles.

I glued 2 circles together (art facing outward) and then applied decoupage glue to each outer side (to make the circles sturdier).

While the circles were drying, I started to string together the dowels by tying knots along the center of each dowel (using a single strand of the thread).

I tied 4 dowels together, spacing them about 4-5 inches apart so that the circles could fit between them. (You could add more dowels to make a taller mobile)

Next, I used a hole punch to cut tiny circles out of the larger circles and then tied a small piece of thread to each one. At this point, I noticed that the circles were starting to curl up along the edges, so I placed them between a few books for several hours.

Later, I attached the circles to the wooden dowels, one on each end.

Once all of the circles were attached, I hung the mobile to the chandelier in our kitchen to balance it – basically just adjusting where the center knot falls and where each of the large circles are positioned.

Our mobile is still hanging in the kitchen, but today I hope to hang it up in Jenna’s room. I might try to add another dowel or two to make a taller mobile since she has high ceilings. We’ll see how it looks …